Donald Trump is using Twitter, the medium that landed him in hot water over the weekend, to defend his campaign's use of six-pointed star next to a photo of Hillary Clinton calling her "the most corrupt candidate ever!"

The Clinton campaign called the tweet "a blatantly anti-Semitic image" in a prepared statement released Monday.

Trump, in a tweet sent Monday, denied that the image featured a Star of David, saying it was a star in the shape of sheriff's badge.

Dishonest media is trying their absolute best to depict a star in a tweet as the Star of David rather than a Sheriff's Star, or plain star!

A six-pointed star has meaning deeply rooted in the Jewish faith, but is often used in other contexts, including by sheriff departments. In the image Trump tweeted, the star is on top of piles of money and appeared to many Trump was playing into stereotypes about Jews being focused only on financial gain.

The original tweet, sent Saturday morning, was deleted and replaced with one showing a red circle in place of the red star.

"Donald Trump's use of a blatantly anti-Semitic image from racist websites to promote his campaign would be disturbing enough, but the fact that it's part of a pattern should give voters major cause for concern," Sarah Bard, Clinton's director for Jewish outreach, told Politico in a statement. "Now, not only won't he apologize for it, he's peddling lies and blaming others."

The image tweeted by Trump had origins in the digital white-supremacist movement.

Mic reported Sunday that the image was shared as early as June 22 on /pol/ — a section of the 8Chan web forum that acts as a digital message board for the alt-right community, an online collective of new-Nazis, anti-Semites and white supremacists that are emboldened by Trump's candidacy.

The Mic report points to the image being first used in a June 15 tweet by @FishBoneHead1, a Twitter account that frequently tweets racist memes about black Democrats, Muslims and those they deem to be "insufficiently conservative."

As of Sunday afternoon, the account had been deleted.

Previous incidents

In November 2015, Trump tweeted a meme that originated from a different alt-right Twitter account incorrectly stating that black people commit more violent crimes against white people than any other race.

Black and white people are more likely to be killed by someone of their own race, according to FBI crime statistics.

In February, Trump was pressured by CNN's Jake Tapper to disavow an endorsement made by David Duke, a known white supremacist, Holocaust denier and former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

Trump contended that he did not know Duke. "I don't know anything you're even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists," Trump told Tapper.